‘Cartoon jihad: hunting the kids’

Jens RohdeThe claim by Jens Rohde, political spokesman for the governing Danish Liberal Party, that “a daughter of one cartoonist was sought out by 12 Moslem males – they were looking to get to her. Fortunately she wasn’t at school” was repeated by right-wing US blogger Michelle Malkin, under the headline “Cartoon Jihad: Hunting the Kids”, and was widely repeated by the numerous other Islamophobes who infest the blogosphere.

The accusation was without any basis in fact, as Jens Rohde himself subsequently admitted. Even Robert Spencer has been forced to concede that the report was nonsense:

“The story about the threatening of the daughter of one of the Danish cartoonists, which I have now removed, turns out to be false. Its source, the Danish politician Jens Rohde, has misinformed the public – according to the cartoonist whose daughter is the subject of the story. In reality, 12 Muslim men did not come to the girl’s school looking for her. Instead, the whole thing was a dispute among two groups of ten- and eleven-year-old girls, and it had nothing to do with cartoon rage.”

No such retraction has been forthcoming from Malkin, however.